


Truth and Consequences

by Sorrel



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Post-Iron Man 2, Pre-Relationship, Rule 63, VERY pre-relationship, guns don't kill people; people with guns kill people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-08 07:43:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6845539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorrel/pseuds/Sorrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Stark Expo has just gone down in flames and Nick Fury has a bargain for the most famous woman in the world: stay on with SHIELD as a civilian contractor, and accept oversight in the form of an assigned SHIELD bodyguard.  The bait: James Buchanan Barnes, SHIELD agent very much not at large.  There's just one slight snag: two very good reasons why the former Winter Solider is the last person Toni Stark would ever accept as a bodyguard.  The result: one very long day in an interrogation room, way too many questions, and the knowledge that even when you're more than eighty years old, people can still surprise you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Truth and Consequences

**Author's Note:**

> This was born out of the what-if of, "What if Iron Man rescued Winter Soldier first?" I also wanted to write a rule!63 Tony, and the two ideas combined, because I'm lazy and didn't want to write multiple stories. I've been idly picking at different versions of this story off and on for years, a page or two here and there, since before Winter Soldier even came out. I saw Civil War last night and it inspired me to stop picking and get it down on paper. Only the tiniest of passing spoilers for the movie, but consider this my answer to what, to me, was one of the most infuriating parts of Civil War.

When she comes into the room, he’s in handcuffs, looking down at the table. He doesn’t look up when she enters, keeping his gaze trained on the smoothly polished surface of the table, his face half-hidden by the fringe of hair that falls across his eyes, but he hears the hesitation in her step when she doesn’t react to her entrance. She’s probably used to people being a lot more eager to give her their time and attention. Even Fury-

The hesitation only last half a second, and then she’s striding across the floor, the heels of her boots loud on the metal plating. There’s a loud scraping noise as she pulls back the chair, then a _clunk_ as she turns it and sets it back down, and at the edge of his vision he sees her straddle the chair backwards and fold her arms across the back.

“So,” says the world’s foremost industrialist and innovator. She has her mother’s eyes. “Sergeant Barnes. I thought you’d be taller.”

He slowly lifts his head to make eye contact. She doesn’t flinch. “Still a lot bigger than you.”

“Most people are,” Toni says cheerfully. It’s not that she’s particularly short, exactly; she’s probably right about average for her generation and gender. But she’s whipcord-lean, with a thinness to her face and frame that looks a lot more like illness than diet. He’s very familiar with the difference. “But I’ve got size where it counts.”

He keeps his gaze from flicking down to her chest, but she laughs anyway, easy and unoffended. “I meant my brain, soldier, but if you want to take a closer look there’s a couple magazines I can recommend.”

“I’m not,” he says, reflexively, and she tilts her head.

“Not interested?” When he says nothing, she smiles, slow and sharp. “Or not a soldier?”

“I’m not anything.”

“Beg to differ, pudding cup. I’d say you’re a lot of things, though I don’t blame you for wanting to forget.”

He lets out a slow breath and flattens his hands on the table. So she knows. At least some. “Did Fury brief you?”

“You could probably call it that,” she says. “Since I’m technically a noncombatant, a classification I find hilarious by the way, I have to agree to a SHIELD-issue babysitter if I to get those juicy private contracts. Because, apparently, I can’t take care of myself. I’d tell him to fuck off, but Pepper’s all, ‘We need money, Toni, you just burned down the Expo, Toni,’ so I said I’d at least hear him out. Apparently, Fury wants it to be you.”

She’s not asking why. Because she knows? Or because she doesn’t know enough yet to ask?

“Did you read my file?”

“I thought I’d come and talk to the real thing first. Go for the personal element; it’s the first thing they teach you in marketing seminars.”

So she doesn’t know. “Read the file,” he says, and closes his eyes.

**~*~**

She comes back an hour later. This time she drags another chair over from the corner, pulls it up to the table and uses it to prop her feet on it. He watches her carefully, but there’s no tension in her frame, no stress.

No fear.

“So normally I’d say that the knockoff brand is never as good as the original, but you might be the exception that proves the rule,” she says. Her tone is brightly, chatty. Friendly. If there’s a false note, he can’t hear it. “Had Zola really cracked the secret to the serum all the way back then? Or did he do some aftermarket tinkering over the years?”

He takes a deep breath and doesn’t think of the needles, or the scalpels, or the ice. For the longest moment, he doesn’t think of anything at all.

“So the latter,” Toni says, almost to herself. “Interesting that he never managed to recreate it- not successfully, I mean. I read the report on the Siberian base. The samples were degraded, weren’t they? They could only control the others for a short period of time.”

He says nothing.

“Their healing factor was too overcharged for the imprint to hold for long. They probably could have found a way around it, but the cancer cells that multiplied just as fast proved to be a somewhat more insurmountable obstacle. So the base was sealed away, and only one soldier remained. Their lone success story. The perfect counterpart to the original article.”

He says nothing.

“How’d SHIELD retrieve you, anyway? Did Hydra get cocky, send you after someone they shouldn’t? Or did they track you down the old fashioned way?”

He looks up at her slowly. She doesn’t flinch this time, either. “You didn’t read the file.”

“I’ve been skimming it,” she says. “It’s not like it’s light reading; the damn thing’s near as big as my old engineering textbook.”

He stares at her, and she grins in response. “C’mon, gumdrop, I’m trying to do the reading but the final’s coming up soon. Help a study-buddy out.”

If she wanted, she could scan the entire file in minutes, have her AI synthesize the information and present her with the relevant highlights. There’s a block here in headquarters to block a satellite uplink, but he’s willing to bet that she’s got it hard-wired on that innocuous little wristband she’s wearing. Maybe not as powerful as the full thing, but enough to get the job done. If she wanted.

The faster he tells her what she wants to hear, the faster she’ll finish the file.

“I was sent after Fury,” he says quietly. “Some of his agents stopped me.” He wants to keep going, offer their names, but he bites it off in time. No sense in involving them if she doesn’t already know.

“I’ve met a couple of those agents,” she says. “One of them’s been my personal assistant for the last month.”

So that’s where Natasha’s been. He knew she and Clint had both been reassigned stateside until some of the fallout could blow over, but while Clint had had time to tell him he was going to New Mexico (at great length, and with much complaining), Natasha had been gone with no warning. And it’s not like he could go find her himself. After what happened in Omsk, he hasn’t been allowed off-base.

“I was deprogrammed,” he says, his voice still flat. “It was decided that I could still be of use, and I was requisitioned as a field agent.”

“I’d say I don’t blame Fury for that, but it’d be a lie, because I make a habit of blaming Fury if I get a hangnail,” she says. “Did you have a choice?”

Her voice is so breezy, so casual, that it takes a minute for him to understand the question. When he does, he smiles bitterly. “I did. They told me I could retire if I want.”

“And you didn’t.”

A house in the suburbs, morning spent jogging through the neighborhood, his own kitchen to cook in, a workshop in the back to try his hand at some woodwork. All the freedom in the world, and neighbors with guns and badges hidden away, just in case he ever got tired of retirement. “What’d be the point?”

She drums her fingers on table, and her gaze drifts down to his hands, curled into loose fists on the table. “If you’re one of their own, then why do they have you in cuffs?”

“That’s for you,” he tells her. “They thought it’d make you more comfortable around me if you saw I was restrained.”

“I’m pretty sure those cuffs won’t do jack shit if you wanted to not be restrained anymore, but I appreciate the gesture, I guess?” Her voice lilts up into a question at the end. “Is there any particular reason I’d feel _more_ comfortable seeing my prospective bodyguard chained up?”

She doesn’t know yet. She’ll understand once she knows. “Read the file,” he tells her, and says nothing more until she’s gone.

**~*~**

She’s back even faster this time, barely ten minutes, and when she returns she’s holding a paper cup that smells like coffee. She settles into her chair, cradling her cup in between her palms as if to warm them. The room isn’t particularly cold, but he sees how thin and pale her fingers are, wrapped around the cup. Her red nail polish is chipped around the edges. The blue veins in the back of her hands stand out like a road map.

“You didn’t read the file,” he says.

“Who has time to read these days, honestly? I did talk to your psychologist while I was getting coffee, though. She was very chatty. I suppose doctor-patient confidentiality isn’t really a thing on a super-secret spy base?”

He’s surprised to find that he’s irritated. Why? Because she keeps drawing it out? “Toni,” he sighs, but she only laughs. It makes her sharp-boned face go bright and pretty- not beautiful, but almost painfully charming. The smile that graced the cover of a hundred magazines, only it’s so much more potent in person.

“See, now I know we’re getting somewhere,” she says smugly. “I can’t trust someone who I can’t annoy. They might be a robot.”

He scowls at her.

“Of course, you’re partway there already, aren’t you?”

He clenches the metal hand into a fist, then slowly flattens it back out. He’d be concerned about the tell, if he cared enough to dissemble. “You’re one to talk.”

There’s the tiniest pause, and he knows that he’s surprised her. For the first time since she first walked in, he did something that she didn’t expect, and when he looks at her, thinking maybe he’s gone too far, he finds her red-painted mouth starting to curl up in genuine amusement. He catches himself staring and look away, his jaw clenching tight. If her laugh a moment ago was charismatic, the pleased smile she’s giving him now is so much worse.

“I like you,” she says. “I wasn’t sure I would- you seemed like maybe you wouldn’t have a sense of humor, no offense-”

“Some taken.”

“-but you’re interesting. I like interesting.”

Against his will, he says, “I heard that about you.”

She only grins wider. “Hey, it takes a lot to get a girl’s attention these days. It’s not all milkshakes and drive-ins and going to the sock hop.”

“Those were after my time,” he says.

“Milkshakes?”

“Sock hops. They got started in 1944 to raise funds. I was already gone to war by then.”

“You are full of surprises, buttercup.”

If only she knew. “So what’d my psychologist have to say?”

If Toni’s bothered by his change of subject, she doesn’t let it show. “That you’re independent, driven, and fiercely loyal.”

He just waits, knowing there’s more.

She acknowledges his silence with a tip of her head. “That you have difficulty forming social bonds outside of combat situations, and that your loyalty is given to individuals rather than institutions. You have difficulty following orders and you’re unwilling to see the bigger picture.”

“That part’s wrong,” he says. She lifts an eyebrow. “I’m a sniper. I see the bigger picture just fine.”

“You just don’t care.”

“No, I just…” He trails off, unwilling to defend himself when there’s no defense. He knows it. He just knows he’s not going to change.

“You just care about your team more.”

He closes his eyes. “Did you read that part of the file, at least?”

“No, but Natalie, ‘scuse me, _Natasha,_ told me when she heard I was coming to talk to you. Apparently she was concerned that SHIELD might have misrepresented the situation.”

He opens his eyes again to squint at her. “They didn’t misrepresent anything.”

“So you went off the reservation, failed to complete your assignment, and blew five years worth of intel and several million dollars of military equipment on a rescue mission that was strictly against orders?”

He can feel a muscle twitch in his jaw. “Yes.”

“Of course, Natasha and, uh, the other one, what’s his name-”

“Clint Barton.”

“-are alive because of it.”

The muscle twitches again, harder this time. “Also yes.”

“Well, I suppose I should thank you, since Agent Backstab did kinda help save my neck earlier this week.” She looks at him sidelong. “Don’t tell her I said that.”

He spreads his hands, listens to the rattle of the handcuff chain. “Yeah, I’m in a position to be telling secrets.”

“Appreciate it.” She studies him. “So is that what you were worried I’d find in your file? Because if so that’s not exactly a surprise. Your willingness to follow friendship into the face of certain death is taught in, like, elementary school history plays. Your handler was an idiot if he thought you’d stay behind.”

He very carefully does not grit his teeth. “He was a little preoccupied.”

“Yeah, you’re not the only one to get over-involved in your working relationships. Hmm, so that’s not it. There’s something else in there, something you think will bother me, specifically. Something with Stark technology, maybe? Or something to do with Obadiah. I know he was involved with some shady shit even before he tried to kill me, so maybe-”

“Toni,” he says, and she stops abruptly at the heavy way he says her name. “Go read the file.”

“Hmm,” she says, and takes a thoughtful sip of her coffee before she stands and reaches across the table. He flinches, and she goes still, but she’s just handing him the cup. When he makes no move to take it, she sets it down, just a couple inches away from his fingers. “Drink that. You look like you need it more than I do.”

He never gets cold anymore; nothing else seems to compare. But when she turns and leaves the room, he still picks up the cup and looks at it, letting the warmth seep into the joints of his fingers. The coffee is milky and smells sweet, which seems out of character for a woman who reputedly runs on high-octane espresso and willpower instead of sleep. There’s a faint red lipstick mark on the rim.

He sighs, turns the cup, and takes a sip from the other side. Two creams, two sugars. Exactly the way he takes it.

**~*~**

When she comes back a couple hours later, she’s got brown paper bag under her arm and a file in her hand, though he knows from a glance it’s not his. It’s not even a personnel file, but something from the engineering department. He hasn’t spent a lot of time down there, but he recognizes the logo.

“The contracts Fury’s offering,” she tells him, though he doesn’t ask. “Mostly retrofits to the Helicarrier, to start. Man, I just said the word ‘Helicarrier’ with a straight face, I’ve been down here way too long.”

“Did you even open my file while you were gone?”

“Nah, had to make a run off base for lunch. Apparently there are rules against getting delivery to your super-secret base.” She opens the bag and holds up a pair of wrapped subs. “You want turkey, or roast beef?”

He eyes them both. He’s pretty sure telling her no isn’t going to get him anywhere, and he’s been down here for hours. It doesn’t hurt to play her game for another little while. “Either of them got mayo?”

“Turkey.”

“Then I’ll take roast beef.”

“Good choice.” She tosses him the sandwich and he catches it, and then they eat in relatively peaceful silence for another half-hour, while Toni pages through her contracts and he watches her. He’s not subtle about it, either: he knows his stare has unnerved more than his fair share of junior agents, but if it bothers her to be watched she doesn’t let it show. She eats like she’s alone, too, takes giant bites and chews noisily, licking juices off her fingers and brushing crumbs off her hand onto her pants instead of grabbing a napkin.

After he finishes his sandwich- she’s only partway through hers- he balls up the wrapped and then leans as far back in his chair as the handcuffs will allow. He can see from the flicker on her face that she noticed the movement, but she doesn’t otherwise react. She just flips through the file, occasionally making a thoughtful “hmm” or giving an annoyed mutter and once a smug, “Ha!” He sits back upright after that, startled out of a near-doze by the sudden noise. Toni looks triumphant.

“Knew he was holding out on me,” she says, and closes the file, looks back over at him. “Enjoy your lunch?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Given your metabolism, I figured I didn’t want to see you when you got hungry.” Then she gets up, gathering the trash back into the paper bag and tucking the contracts under her arm. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

“Read the file!” he calls after her, and she gives a lazy wave of acknowledgement over her shoulder as she shuts the door.

**~*~**

It’s not Toni who comes back next, but Natasha. He feels his whole body go lax with relief for a moment- she’s here, she’s alright, she’s unharmed- before he immediately tenses back up when he realizes that her presence is probably a bad sign. “Did she leave?”

“No, she’s still on base, she’s down in the sublevels harassing the geeks about power draws or something,” Natasha says, looking somewhat annoyed about it. “I’m not sure why she’s drawing it out, but we’re starting to get increasingly annoyed messages from Pepper about kidnapping Iron Woman in the middle of a PR crisis.”

“She hasn’t read the file,” he says, and Natasha stands there near the door, arms crossed over her chest, studying him. “I think she’s doing it out of spite now.”

“That does sound like Toni,” Natasha agrees. He tilts his head, requesting clarification, and she smiles. “I had a lot of time to observe her. I’m pretty sure it was spite that kept her going long enough to find a cure.”

He thinks of the hollows of her collarbones, the riverbed veins on the inside of her wrists. The shadows under her eyes. “The cure for what?”

“Heavy metal poisoning. Her arc reactor was killing her.” Natasha studies him carefully. “Fury didn’t tell you?”

“I didn’t ask.”

He expects her gaze to sharpen at the admission, for her to get the huntress look, like a lioness about to pounce on her prey. He would never walk into an assignment without a full briefing, not after all of the death that was blindly dealt from his hands when he couldn’t ask. He knows what an admission it is.

But if anything, her expression goes gentle. Pitying. “James,” she says. “What are you hoping to get out of this?”

If he knew, he’d tell her. But he doesn’t know, and so he says nothing. She sighs and crosses the room, leans down to plant a kiss on his forehead.

“You are a blind, stubborn idiot,” she says in Russian. “You’ve waited this long, surely you can survive a little longer.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” he replies, in the same language, “but surviving is the one thing I’m good at.”

“True.” She gives the back of his neck a squeeze. “Do try not to let her kill you. I’d hate to break in someone new.”

“You’re all heart, Tasha.”

**~*~**

When she’s gone, it’s quiet again, broken only when Toni sticks her head back in the door a half-hour later. There’s engine grease smeared across her cheek and handprints stained onto her red button-down shirt. “Hey, question for you. About how many pounds would you say you could lift?”

He’s abruptly tired of this game, with its unknown rules and its endless uncertainties. They’re playing at the highest of stakes, and he doesn’t even know if she knows the shape of the board. “Read the file,” he says, and she shrugs and shuts the door.

**~*~**

“So out of curiosity,” she says, the next time she comes by. The grease is gone now, scrubbed off along with any makeup. Clean, he can see the lingering traces of her illness writ even more clearly on her face. “How much do you actually remember? From when you were, you know, the death popsicle of doom or whatever?”

It’s a familiar question- if a unique way of asking it- but she doesn’t look like all the others who’ve asked. A long line of agents and psychologists and interrogation specialists and deprogrammers, and all of them had the same careful expression, so deliberately neutral, like he was a bomb that needed to be defused. They were right, of course. But asking questions wasn’t going to trip his wires, however much he disliked thinking about it.

Toni just looks curious.

“Read the file,” he says. “It’s all in there.”

“I’d rather ask you. Are the memories clear, or is it like trying to retrace your steps the night after a really big blowout party?”

“Read the file.”

“Does it feel like your actions, or like it was done by someone else while you just observed from the inside?”

“Read the file.”

“How many missions did you actually run?”

He feels like he’s back on the table in Zola’s lab. The very first one, before he was anything but Bucky Barnes, when all he could do was stare at the ceiling and be grateful, be so fucking grateful, that whatever else was happening, at least Steve was safe. At least Steve would be out of it. As long as Steve was safe nothing else mattered, so he could just lie there and repeat-

“Read the file.”

“Yeah,” she says, startling him. He looks over and she’s rising to her feet, giving him a look he saw her father turn a hundred times towards recalcitrant machinery. A look that says, _I will take you apart until I find the answer._ “I think I will.”

**~*~**

This time he’s left alone for much longer, hours at least. The wait doesn’t bother him: he was a sniper, and he’s waited far longer for far less important reasons. The uncertainty gnaws at him somewhat, but there’s only so many possible outcomes, and he’s made his peace with all of them.

There is no clock in the room, but it’s late when she comes back, deep into the night. Somewhere along the line she shed her stained blouse in favor of a SHIELD-issue sweatshirt that is about two sizes too big for her. It makes her look young, and vulnerable, in ways that tighten the back of his throat. He can’t help the comparison, so he doesn’t try. Howard Stark’s daughter would always make him think of Steve. He just didn’t expect the reaction to be quite so… visceral.

Is she aware of that? Is she playing to it deliberately, in fear of what he might do?

She doesn’t sit at the table this time. She stands, at the back of the room near the door. A quick exit? Or so she can lock it to stop others from interfering?

The silence stretches out painfully between them, but he makes no move to break it. Just watches her face, and waits.

“Do you understand what play Fury’s making here?” she says, finally.

Disappointment cuts through him like a knife. “Read the-”

“I read it,” she says. Her expression doesn’t change. “Do you know why he set this up?”

She knows. She knows and she came here, and she’s not carrying a weapon, she doesn’t even have the briefcase with the suit, so why-

“I don’t know,” he says honestly. And then, “I didn’t ask.”

“Okay,” she says, and she comes to sit at the table across from him. He stares at her, but she just folds her hands on the table in front of her, her face still enough to put Natasha’s to shame. “Then let me explain. Fury wants me working for him. But he doesn’t want me to know that, because he doesn’t want me coming in on a position of strength; he wants me grateful for every crumb he gives me. So he’s throwing up roadblocks. First, I’m only allowed in as a consultant- no problem, I don’t want to be part of his boyband anyway. Second, I have to run any missions as Iron Woman past him for permission. I told him to go fuck himself. Third, he wants me to have a babysitter. For my 'safety,' because _that's_ his main concern here. I tell him to go fuck himself again, so he pulls out his ace in the hole: James Buchanan Barnes is back from the dead, and he’s going to be my new bodyguard.”

And she’d been curious. Howard’s daughter couldn’t help but be curious.

“Which is an interesting play on a number of levels, obviously,” she continues. “For one, why would you even bother to agree to it? Which I made sure about, by the way. I think Fury was a little suspicious that I went that route immediately, but I’m guessing you can figure out what I’m after.”

She’s not slow, he’ll give her that. “Why I’m here,” he says. “With SHIELD.”

“Cookie for Sergeant Barnes. I’m sure that most of it has to do with Agent Traitor and the dude with the bow, but that wouldn’t have been the case at first. You didn’t know them yet, and there was a whole alphabet soup of options that would’ve been happy to take you- or you could’ve gone rogue, gotten out and lived off the grid. Which means that Fury offered you something, something big enough to make it worth staying at SHIELD. Something big enough that you’re willing to stick it out and play babysitter to a woman that you’re pretty sure is gonna hate your guts.”

Well. She definitely read the file. “You figure out what it is?” he says, keeping his voice even, though his hands tight up into fists. His body recognizing danger in the room, even if she’s not showing it yet.

“I had a chance to go through some of my dad’s things recently,” she says, matching his tone. “Made it pretty simple to figure out. The Arctic expeditions never stopped; they just kept going under SHIELD instead. Which means that Fury promised you the one thing that no one else in the world can offer. The chance to get your best friend back.”

He realizes abruptly that it’s not _Steve_ that she reminds him of. It’s Peggy.

"You got it all worked out, huh?"

"I do try. You want the rest?"

He leans back in his seat, deliberately casual. He still can't read her, either her face or her body. A better liar, perhaps, than the SHIELD psychs had given her credit for in her initial assessment, though there's a kind of violent stillness to her that tells him she's used to lying in motion. She's the type that likes to throw words at you until you give up. The least he can do is let her. "Hit me."

"Fury's a futurist, like me. And he knows it's only going to be a matter of time."

A natural showman, just like her dad. Maybe even better than her dad. Then again, she's older than Howard was when he knew the man, by a good half-decade at least. She's had more practice. "Until?"

"Until something comes up that's bigger than one person can handle," she says, as if it's obvious. "Or, well, two or three, I guess, I don't get solo credit for the world-saving this week, there goes my bonus check. The point is, he wants to put a group together. A real, honest-to-god superhero team-up. Except superheroes are like cats; we get all grumpy and territorial, it's a whole thing. Three of his favored few are already SHIELD agents and know how to work in a group, except, whoops, the super-soldier doesn't play nice with anyone but the other two. And then there's me, a narcissist with a god complex and a chip on my shoulder when it comes to SHIELD. We're the problem children, and he's pulling the Hail Mary of exasperated parents the world over: he's locking us in a room in the hopes that we'll figure out that sharing is caring after all."

He turns the idea over in his head, but as much as he'd like to deny it, it makes sense. It's exactly the kind of shit that Fury would pull. "Isn't that just as likely to backfire?"

"Probably," she says, with a dismissive wave. "But he's gambling that it won't. He's gambling that I'm going to be feeling emotionally vulnerable after my recent brush with death and sentimental enough about my recent amble down Memory Lane that I'll welcome the chance to bond with one of Dad's old war buddies. And he's gambling that your demonstrated tendency towards suicidal loyalty to smart-mouthed punks with chips on their shoulders will kick in and, I dunno, keep you from strangling me in my sleep or whatever. I've mentioned I can be annoying, right?"

There's a knee-jerk reflex to defend himself, _you don't know me._ But he doesn't bother. "You've mentioned," he says, instead. He's tired of the axe hanging over his head. He'd rather get it over with. "But I'm kinda feeling that's not the problem with his little plan."

She tilts her head, and something wells up under her calm facade, some very strong emotion that flares her pupils and speeds her pulse. "There is that small fly in the ointment."

He thought he'd feel relief, that she finally acknowledged it. Like the axe was in free-fall, now, with only God and gravity to know how it lands.

But he can feel the tension creep tighter down his spine instead, the old fight-or-flight survival instinct rearing its head when it's least welcome. He doesn't know what she's thinking, doesn't know what she's planning, if she's going to spit in his face or go over the table or even pull a weapon. He didn't spot one, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have one on her. And that's just one more edge to his rush of adrenaline, because- what'll he do if she goes for him? Is he going to fight her off? Let her get in a few hits and then subdue her?

Or will he just sit here and let her do it?

"Because,” he says steadily, “I killed your parents.”

She’s good- she’s really good, as befitting someone who grew up in the spotlight, with cameras to watch her every move. But she’s not good enough to hide her flinch. “Yeah, there’s that little detail.”

He doesn’t say anything more. He can’t. He just watches her, and waits. For what she says next or for the end, he’s not entirely sure. But he waits.

“That’s part of Fury’s gamble too,” she says, finally. She stands and slides her hand into her pocket, and he tracks the gesture helplessly, knowing that she could have anything in there. A knife, maybe. A syringe. Or maybe something that’ll fold out into her gauntlet. If the whole armor could fit into a suitcase, she can fit the glove into her pocket.

“He’s gambling that I’m not going to kill you for what you did,” she continues, circling the table now, getting close. “He’s gambling that either I cared about my parents less or I care about being a hero more than I want vengeance. Which is extremely foolish on his part. I mean, my dad might’ve been an asshole but there was nothing I wanted more than his approval, and fuck knows I never got a chance to get that. And my mom? I loved my mom more than anything. Being a hero doesn’t mean more to me than that.”

He can’t look at her. He can’t look at her face and see her father’s pugnacious jawline, her mother’s dark eyes. And remember that the last time he saw them he was- “It wouldn’t to me, either.”

“But you know what the worst part is?”

He closes his eyes and waits, flattening his feet against the floor as his thigh muscles go tight, ready to jump, ready to hold, ready to- “No, what?”

“That sonofabitch is two hundred percent right.”

The _click_ of a lock follows her words, and he looks down to see his handcuffs fall open. She drops the key next to him, and eases down to sit hipshot against the edge of the table. He stares up at her blankly.

“I’m not going to kill you,” she tells him, almost kindly. “That was never going to happen. If you read _my_ file and you thought that I would ever hold a _weapon_ responsible for the actions of a killer, you are much stupider than the history books led me to believe.”

It takes him a minute to find his voice. “Steve was always the thinker. Not me.”

“Military analysts have said otherwise, but sure, if it makes you feel better.” She leans back on her hands and watches him as he rubs his flesh-and-bone wrist, her eyes following the twist and curve of his metal one. “So now that we’ve got that out of the way, what do you think? Still wanna give it a shot?”

He eyes her warily. “You mean say yes to Fury?”

“Technically you already said yes to Fury. I’m asking if you want me to tell him no.” She shrugs at his seeking look. “There’s other concessions I could make, to keep him feeling like he’s won. It doesn’t have to be this one. You’d be free to go back to… whatever it is that agents do.”

Not really. They can’t trust him in the field anymore, not after Omsk. And he’s not good for anything else. He’d be a joke even as a bodyguard, but then again she made it pretty clear that that wasn’t exactly Fury’s goal. “Why would you even want-” _Me,_ he almost says, except that would come out wrong. “-that?”

“Gee, I don’t know, my life and home are in a shambles, and you’re a super soldier with a robot arm, I guess I figured you might prove useful,” she says, dryer than the Sahara. “Plus, I like to keep a little eye candy around me when I’m working. It’s how they got me with Natasha.”

He tilts his head, trying to figure out if she's joking or not. She doesn't _seem_ to be, but- “I think I’m flattered.”

“If you only _think_ you’re flattered, then I must be out of practice.”

He stares at her. She looks steadily back, a little smile quirking at the corners of her mouth. “You’re fucking serious.”

“I am absolutely fucking serious. I think it could be interesting.”

“That how you make all your decisions? Whether or not it’ll be ‘interesting?’”

“All the good ones, sure.”

She honestly does not seem to be joking. Out of all the outcomes he pictured, this wasn’t really one of them. “Then- yeah,” he says, not giving himself time to overthink it. “Sure. Until-”

“-they find Cap,” she finishes, with a wry ghost of a smile. “Terms I can agree to.” She thrusts out her hand. “We got a deal, Sergeant Barnes?”

_This is a terrible idea,_ he thinks, and takes her hand in his. Shakes. “We got a deal. And it’s Bucky.”

“Yeah?” She lets his hand drop and looks away, and that’s how he’ll always remember this scene, later, when he replays it in his head: her too-thin face in profile, the angle of her jaw so much like Howard’s, the stubborn tilt to her chin so much like Peggy, and the sarcastic little quirk of a smile that’s entirely hers. “I’d heard that about you.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry, but among my many criticisms of out-of-character writing in that movie, the fact that Tony was angry at Bucky for being the weapon Hydra used to kill his parents instead of Steve for lying to him about it was egregious and should never have been put on screen.
> 
> I'm [sorrelchestnut](http://sorrelchestnut.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, come say hi!


End file.
